Fuck workmates.

They do fuck all and criticize you for not doing what they fucking want.

The story is that there's this company called Argos and one day they rang me up saying I was successful in the interview and I was offered a temporary position over the busiest period of the year. Long hours, good money? Yeah? No. Well, for the age I was, I was getting more than enough to do me as I was only seventeen at the time, but still kind of shit.

I was trained up as a picker and a picker is basically the cockroaches of the storeroom scurrying about fetching the customers their goods. All was well and grand really; my friends worked there, the managers were nice and the work was easy. Christmas period over! Bam, get the fuck out of the building.

Next year around October I was called again about a job, still being a student and stuck with a fat ass student loan I thought to myself, why the hell not. Same job, different managers. One of the managers left because he lived too far away for it to be feasible to travel day in and day out to the store and was replaced by a she-devil. Said woman fired another of the managers for fiddling with the out-of-stock system (which is whenever you buy something and it can't be found in the stockroom so they have to refund you.) and was replaced by a friendly young man who was the stark contrast to the manageress. Circle of life I guess. Once Christmas was over, I was back on the job-hunt because sales weren't too strong.

Here's where my problems with the job lie now. During my third fucking time working with them I started to become really jaded and cynical with every goings on in the shop. I started to detest most of my work colleagues and I was given work that I wasn't trained for and that someone else could have easily done instead. I did it anyways, but I wasn't best pleased. Well, this was the year of the most training for me. I was trained on tills, damages, raising and releasing orders, delivery and jewelry. All well and grand until I realized that this gave them the excuse to phone in every waking moment I had wanting me to come in to do something, and as I was on a temporary contract and needed the money at the time I came on in.

This put a strain on my relatively new relationship and my mental health because the one thing I noticed whilst I'm out there busting my ass to cover breaks, making sure the delivery's done on time and generally helping out other staff members is that the cunts only look out for themselves and they don't give a shit about the extra workload that's piled onto me. Don't get me wrong, there's people that did pull their weight and I'm grateful towards that but I was left hating, actually fucking hating every single customer that came into the shop with their stupid questions and ignorant arguments.

As I mentioned about the strain this put me under, I had a severe case of job burnout and this left me on autopilot throughout my shifts and incredibly distant from my colleagues and that's just the beginning. Now, I ain't one to cry especially over nothing, but I had to go on an early break because I just couldn't help but feel strangely sad and overwhelmed and as I went out for a smoke I just caught myself for letting one out. So wham bam, earphones in and started listening to music on my break to see if I could calm down a bit. Went in, still feeling like shit and sat in the canteen all sullen and shit (I honestly could not have been bothered to put a happy face on.) And then it happened... one of the team leaders who was on their break also asked if I was alright. I just couldn't hold it back, I just sat there blubbering for no reason at all, proper streams of tears flowing down my face and I was confused as to why I was feeling like this. Maybe it was a sincere question into my well-being from one of the people who never before tried to help me, maybe not. But the manageress was called and she was trying to calm me down and asking if I wanted to go home. Fuck that shit, go home because of an episode? Hell to the no and I told her as such, only in a nicer way. So back to work I went after taking another extra fifteen minutes to smoke another couple of ciggies.

Here's a picture to break up the wall of text.

And then it happened, suddenly I became the weak one who everyone felt like they had to help me. Finally I was getting what I wanted but I was furious about it because I felt like they pitied me or something, and felt like they had to help me. Why couldn't they do that a few months ago? Why not come off their breaks when they're supposed to and let me get back to what I was doing? Why not come up whenever I'm upstairs by myself whenever an order of fifteen comes through to give me a hand? Why not share the workload or even ask if I need help? Why wait until I have to have some sort of breakdown, why let it get like that.

I felt so unappreciated throughout the entire Christmas period, seriously, it led to problems with my girlfriend because I don't see her enough as I would like whenever I'm not working, so I was seeing even less of her because I'm trying to get money to treat her and see her and shit, funny isn't it? But that did it for me, I told her the goings on and she knew what I was going through, she knew right then that me being tired and frustrated all the time was because of the cunts taking advantage of me.

But, I'm a glutton for punishment, I'm back in there now on a part-time eight hour contract pushing 45 hours a week, six days a week as a delivery assistant and I finally got the praise I so desperately needed, it put me on a buzz for the rest of the day.

When you do deliveries, you have to put it on the shelve, tidy the shelf and move on and this day was tight. New catalog coming out, new lines and no fucking space in the stockroom so we're traveling like fucking gacks carrying flatpacks on out shoulders up and down the shop looking for space. 2,000 units in one day and that's a lot. Well, one of my colleagues came up to me and said that the area manager wanted to see me. I thought to myslef, "Fuck, what did I do?" and was scared going to see him. Well, he sat me down and turned around and said this to me,

"I've been doing the quality checks to make sure the putaway standards are 100% and I cannot find a single fault in your shelves and I'd like to issue you a smile to show my appreciation for that."

A smile is kind of a certificate that you get for recognition of good work and lets you get money off your next purchase in the store. Needless to say I was ecstatic about it. Appreciation was what he said. That was a morale boost for me.

So other than that one time, it has been a torrential rain of shit when I work and it probably always will be. But fuck it, money talks. And talk about a shit end to a shit blog, eh?

Comments

As soon as I read the word "Argos", I knew what this blog was going to be about, since it's a pretty seedy company and that.

This may sound obvious and easier said than done, but unless you don't have a choice, you ought to consider finding somewhere else to work if your job makes you feel like shit again. You've got to put a value your own well-being.

Darkhoodness, believe me, if I ever get offered another job somewhere else, even for lower pay, I'll tell Argos to shove their job down their throat and blow it out their ass. Unfortunately, Northern Ireland isn't really flowing with job opportunities and there's a lot of people applying these jobs.

And cheers, STM, hopefully it will shape out to be better this time around. At least I get a permanent contract again. If I don't then I'm going to leave my mark on the place.

To make my time there a bit better I'm starting to draw motivational posters and sticking them up anonymously on the briefing board. It features an plagiarized alien who I called the Overlord of Argos and he constantly gives out moral boosting advice to them team.

There will be a new "motivational poster" put up for each one removed. Should be worth a couple of laughs.

(I only took ten minutes to draw that in the middle of a busy day, so forgive the shitness of quality. The other ones shall be pre-drawn the night before.)